Our basement smells like Blood & Bone, a popular fertilizer in Australia which consists of decomposing animals, vegetables, and poop. Maybe two weeks ago, something blocked up the subterranean plumbing in the basement which drains our kitchen sink, and everything we ran through the insinkerator came spewing out of an overflow pipe and all over the basement floor. Of course, since we only do our laundry once a week (if that), by the time we noticed the carpet of decomposing chopped food scraps down there, the pumpkin seeds lying on the moist concrete had sprouted rather impressive three-inch shoots. I'm being very irresponsible about cleaning up the mess. Maybe we'll have full-sized pumpkins growing next to the washing machine in time for Halloween.

It occurs to me that American fertilizer companies could probably never get away with a product name as honest as "Blood & Bone." In any case, the smell is one of my least favorite in all the world. I remember once when I was a child, I found a bag of B&B on the ground in a hardware store carpark. It must have fallen off a truck. Curiously, I turned it over, and saw that the bag had burst open and was teeming with maggots.

Matt and I had a nerd-spat a couple of nights ago about the new Gamut site. He never told me that he didn't want the news box on every page (of course, I never asked). All is resolved now, but only after some knocking of heads regarding tables vs CSS and some frustrated and stubborn pouting on my part. Of course, after all that, I managed to tweak the CSS so that the internal pages fit his intention, and it didn't take anywhere near as long as I thought it would. CSS wins again!

I performed my first Popcorn Hat touring show, Aesop's Fables II, at a daycare center in Enola with Sean on Friday. Oh, lordy. Not only did I mess up my lines, I messed up the order of the fables. Luckily, Sean is talented and quick enough to cover my arse, and the show seemed to go down well with the kids. Yesterday, our performance of Jack and the Beanstalk was supported immensely by a crew of theatre-related friends and folk, and our combined energy threw the show into a terrific overdrive. When I'm a billionaire with my own theatre, I'm going to pay professional audience members to attend and boost shows.

However, in the middle of Jack and the Beanstalk, my neck seized up. Now I can only move my head from side to side after some considerable ingestion of ibuprofen.

This was not helped by a film shoot in Ellicott City last night for Two Front Teeth. They had to reshoot the Decapitated Elf Head in a Bag scene, so I had to perform with only my head while lying on the ground - not the most comfortable of positions when a muscle in your neck has developed premature rigor mortis.

Worse still, my neck area now hurts inside and out - this morning I woke up with an ominous raw throat. I can't rest - today and tomorrow, I'm shooting No Sanctuary, and I have another performance of Aesop's Fables in the early evening.

At least the impending illness goes some way towards explaining my recent lapses of intelligence, recall, and disposition.

A melody, he said, is the most fleeting of things. It happens and it ceases. The great silence devours it, and seemingly annihilates it. Passage is essential to its being. Yet though for a melody, to halt is to die a violent death, all music, the prophet affirmed, has also eternal life. After silence it may occur again, with all its freshness and aliveness. Time cannot age it; for its home is in a country outside time. And that country, thus the young musician earnestly preached, is also the home land of every man and woman, nay of every living thing that has any gift of music. Those who seek immortality must strive to waken their tranced souls into melody and harmony. And according to their degree of musical originality and proficiency will be their standing in the eternal life.